Australian Energy Market Operator

AEMO operates Australia's National Electricity Market (NEM), the interconnected power system in Australia’s eastern and south-eastern seaboard, and the Wholesale Electricity Market (WEM) and power system in Western Australia.

AEMO operates gas retail markets in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, Queensland, South Australia, Victoria, and Western Australia. AEMO also operates wholesale gas markets in south-eastern Australia, those being the Declared Wholesale Gas Market in Victoria (DWGM), the Short Term Trading Market in Adelaide, Brisbane and Sydney (STTM), and the Gas Supply Hub (GSH), whose trading locations are based at Wallumbilla in Queensland, and Moomba in South Australia. AEMO also operates the Natural Gas Services Bulletin Board (GBB), and is system operator of the Victorian Gas Declared Transmission System. AEMO is also responsible for Gas Services Information functions in Western Australia.

Scheduled outages

Under Chapter 3 of the market rules, System Management must assess outages that are on the equipment list and approve or reject those outages. Market participants us the Market Participant Interface (MPI) to enter information on equipment that needs to be taken out of service due to an outage, and to request for those outages to be approved.

The Market Participant Interface can be accessed here. Guides for the Market Participant Interface and Network Operator Interface can be accessed below.

Occasionally a Market Participant may require access to the network to facilitate work as part of their facility outage. To coordinate switching of the Western Power Network, information on access to the Western Power Network can be found here.

As part of outage transparency market rules, System Management must also publish all generator outage details in real time (as outage status information changes), and historical outage records. These can be accessed on the WEM data pages.

Forced outages

Under Chapter 3.21 of the market rules, participants must lodge forced outage information with System Management as soon as practicable.

Market Participants may subsequently apply to System Management to convert their forced outage to a consequential outage, if they believe that the forced outage was as a result of either:

Projected assessment of system adequacy (ST PASA and MT PASA)

The projected assessment of system adequacy (PASA) is a forecasting study undertaken by System Management. It contains statistical load forecast information against projected available capacity figures (allowing for quantities of non-scheduled generation capacity based on historical figures).

System Management undertakes two versions of the PASA. The short term PASA is published by AEMO every Thursday and is a three-week in advance forecast, and the medium term PASA is published by AEMO on the 15th day of every month and forecasts three years in advance. Reports for both versions can be found in the WEM data pages.

Commissioning tests

The Commissioning test plan template below must be completed for every request by a market participant to perform a Commissioning test.

For commissioning test plans that include technical rule compliance tests or tests which might have an impact on the operation or performance of the power system, please note that test procedures must also be submitted to Western Power System Analysis for approval prior to testing, and to coordinate witnessing of tests if required.